Saturday, May 20, 2017

Blumenthal: I’m Ready For My Close-Up

In mid-May, David Hawkins of Roll Callthrew a bouquet of
compliments at U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal: “But Blumenthal’s profile
has never been as prominent as in the past week, after he declared that the
firing of James B. Comey as FBI director has created ‘a looming constitutional
crisis that is deadly serious’ and ‘may well produce impeachment proceedings,
although we’re very far from that possibility.’”

The reader will note Blumenthal's adjectives. A
"looming' crisis cannot be "deadly." The "crisis” is
"looming" because we cannot be certain it is a crisis, except in
Blumenthal's fevered imagination. And if we are "very far” from the
possibility of a crisis, in what sense may the crisis be fairly described as a
crisis? Note the "may" standing guard over this sentence: the crisis
"may well produce impeachment proceedings,” or the crisis – but is it a
crisis? See above -- may yet produce egg on Blumenthal’s face. Once an editor
of the Harvard Crimson, Blumenthal has been goosing the media his entire political
life. And the left of center media, perpetually frightened of conservative
bogeymen, has been sopping up Blumenthal’s tendentious assertions for as long
as the Senator From Planned Parenthood has been in public life. These are
people who are supposed to be able to parse sentences and wring the nonsense
out of them.

They have their work cut out for them. It ain’t easy making
a mountain of a molehill while the testimony of so many witnesses yet remains
in the closet. More dirt! We need more dirt!

Here is the New York Times as cited by CTMirror: “The New
York Times reported late Tuesday that Comey wrote a memo saying that
Trump asked him to abandon the FBI investigation of Flynn, a member of
Trump’s campaign team. The meeting took place the day after Flynn resigned in
February, following revelations the former NSA chief had lied about his
meetings with Russian officials before Trump took office…”

There might be a there there if 1) the context of the memo
supports the view, apparently held by Blumenthal, that Trump ordered Comey not
to investigate Flynn – doubtful, or 2) Trump fired Comey because Comey refused
Trump’s order – more doubtful. Blumenthal has been pushing for the appointment
of a special prosecutor ever since U.S. Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer
told him to push for the appointment of a special prosecutor. Always a good
soldier, Blumenthal immediately fell into line as soon as he arrived at Camp
Progressive.

He was stunned, Blumenthal said, STUNNED! “that any of my
colleagues would possibly oppose the appointment of an independent special
prosecutor after this astonishing revelation and other mounting evidence of
political interference in a criminal investigation. All of the evidence –
including transcripts, tapes, memos, and other documents – must be subpoenaed
immediately. All of the relevant actors – including Jim Comey, (Attorney
General) Jeff Sessions, (Deputy Attorney General) Rod Rosenstein, and (White
House counsel) Don McGahn – should be called to testify under oath in public
before the Senate Judiciary Committee. There can be no delay.”

There are about a half dozen administrative organs
investigating Trump’s putative warm ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Crossing their fingers, Democrats are hoping to sell to a doubtful public the
fantasy narrative that Hillary Clinton lost an election to Donald Trump because
the election had been fixed by Putin. There is little doubt – though no unimpeachable
evidence so far – that Putin sought to create discord during the election; that
has been his usual MO. However, there is solid reason to believe that Putin had
been advised by his operatives that Clinton would win the election; so the
discord he may have sought to create was designed not primarily to help Trump but
to weaken a prospective Clinton presidency.

Blumenthal did not remain stunned for long. His colleagues
quickly appointed a special counsel to investigate Trump’s so far inferential warm ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. These presumed ties developed a
frost after Trump bombed Putin Kewpie Doll Bashir Assad, who had used chemical
weapons to murder his opposition. The Trump bombing more or less reinstated a quickly
disappearing “red line” drawn by former Democratic President Barack Obama, who
had announced that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian dictator would
trigger a vigorous response by the lead-from-behind President. Obama winked as
Putin gobbled up Crimea in Ukraine, and the former Nobel Peace Prize President
shipped millions of dollars in gold and cash to Putin’s Iranian mob, which the
ayatollahs doubtless will use to procure the terrorist services of Hamas, a
crowd of thugs determined to push Israel into the sea. None of these events
spurred Blumenthal or Schumer, both of whom are Jewish, to call for a special
counsel to probe Obama’s apparent warm ties to a regime in Iran that daily
calls for the obliteration of the Great Satan, represented by Blumenthal and
Schumer in the U.S. Congress.

If Blumenthal had been unusually exercised by Clinton’s
putative ties to Putin – the former Secretary of State had facilitated Putin’s
appropriation of U.S. uranium and presented the Russian ambassador with a red
re-set button – all of us would have known it, because Blumenthal is the least
camera shy senator in the U.S. Congress.

Having arrived in the oval office, Trump announced he did
not favor pressing charges against Clinton, which opened the way for a
presidential putsch organized by Democrats against Trump – poetic justice on
the march.

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For
35 years a political columnist published in a variety of Connecticut newspapers,
Don Pesci has written for the Middletown Press, the Torrington Register
Citizen, The Waterbury Republican American, the Norwich Bulletin, the Day of
New London, the Journal Inquirer of Manchester, the Providence Journal, and
others; he is also the proprietor of a popular blog, Connecticut Commentary:
Red Notes from a Blue State, one of the older Connecticut blogs. Most of the
columns are printed here, roughly 2,500 entrees.